Catherine Telford-KeoghDental Dam

Catherine Telford-Keogh combines domestic, industrial, and edible materials in unfamiliar ways to highlight inherent connections between human and non-human matter. Adopting the forms of tables, trays, containers, and other familiar functional objects, her sculptures act as flatbed terrains for the accumulation of aqueous and encrusted materials mixed beyond easy recognition.Dental Dam presents an installation of new objects configured to consider the excess and blockage of the mouth; a porous site of communication, sexuality, and ingestion. The artist overlays, coats, and embeds a gamut of objects and liquids that shift and chemically alter over time to simulate aspects of digestion. Her intense layering of elements combine to form chains of superimposed ingredients—including brand names such as Yankee Candle® Fragrance Spheres™, Froot Loops®, and Purina® Dog Chow®. The use of prolonged titles and lists of materials makes explicit the base materiality of these elements and their relationship to capitalist material culture. Telford-Keogh’s work suggests a discomfiting intimacy between bodies and things consumed, evoking underlying links between ecology, consumption, and bodily function.

The artist acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.